


Take Me Away

by cyanspica



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s13e13 Devil's Bargain, Fix-It, Hurt Gabriel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Please Just Let My Child Be Happy, Protective Sam Winchester, This Episode Murdered and Resurrected Me Simultaneously, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-15 19:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13620309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanspica/pseuds/cyanspica
Summary: Everything Gabriel ever was, and everything he’d ever hoped to be had been stolen from him a long time ago.





	Take Me Away

 

It’s been the better part of a decade since Gabriel’s heard Sam’s voice, but he doesn’t know that. How can he? He used to keep count of all the time he’d passed in his shitty prison, but time is damned hard to keep track of when all you’ve got to keep you company is stone and silence and chains he’s too tired to even struggle against anymore.

Everything Gabriel ever was, and everything he’d ever hoped to be had been stolen from him a long time ago.

All the fight’s been sapped out of him, so bad it doesn’t even shame him anymore to admit it. He’s weak, he’s tired, he’s hurting. He’s got nothing, all his Grace dulled down to no more than a spark. He used to have a soul. He used to still have enough fight left in him to snarl and struggle and snap when someone was stupid enough to take a step too close.

He used to be able to talk—hell, sometimes he’d even sing. The sound of his own voice was his last comfort, the way he had to fight when all his struggles against his bonds amounted to nothing, but one too many snarky jabs at Asmodeus and his resemblance to Colonel Sanders had them sewing his mouth shut like he was some unlucky sap in an old slasher flick.

He used to be able to do a lot of things. He used to _be_ a lot of things. Some good, maybe some bad, but he used to be someone, something. He couldn't have been that bad, though, not when Sam always seemed to think Gabriel was worth his love for whatever reason. But now? Even being bad, being evil, being something that would shatter Sam’s poor stained soul into something even more broken than it already is would be better than being whatever shell of himself he knows he’s become.

Now, the only thing he’s got is his thoughts, but even that’s only an illusion. Gabriel knows that Asmodeus can see he doesn’t have anything left in him anymore. No part of him belongs to himself at all nowadays, really. He was an archangel once, sure, but he was a Trickster after that—something that he suspected always suited him far better. And, well, he knows illusions better than anybody.

Except maybe not more than Lucifer.

He used to like to think about Lucifer, too. His big brother, who he loved so damned much that he couldn't ever find the heart to try to kill right. Right up until when he ran Gabriel’s own sword straight through his stomach, at least. It was a better memory than it should've been, really. There'd been a brief moment of... peace, strangely enough. He'd looked down, seen the weapon running him through. For a moment, he'd truly believed he was going to die.

He'd had his moment of peace, his moment of acceptance even as Sam's screamed prayers to him tapered off into nothing. It had been serene in a twisted kind of way, even when the pain caught up with him.

Gabriel used to like to pretend that his life had ended there, that he didn’t somehow get snatched away from death in those last few fragile seconds, locked away in the cell he still occupied now until his pride and dignity and sense of self wasted away.

But he’s old, so very old, and all that age is finally catching up with him because he’s so damned tired and weary that he can hardly stand to think about those things anymore.

So he doesn’t.

It’s better that way.

That’s what he’s telling himself as coughs deep and raw and mercilessly, gradually pulling him away from his thoughts—or rather, his lack of them. Blood thick and dark enough to look like rust catches his attention, sends his mind spinning into gears he’s almost forgotten how to use as it tumbles past his lips onto the floor. His mind’s slow after knowing nothing for so long, but it slowly strikes him that it’s strange. He’s had the taste of blood in his mouth ever since Asmodeus sealed him shut with that damned wire, never had a chance to cough it out.

The archangel doesn’t have the energy to lift his head, but his vision slowly centers on the hand he has pressed against the stone floor until he finds something else wrong with that, too. He’s been tied up, in chains for too long to even remember the scars and lines of his own hand, but he knows it’s his.

He knows it’s his because the one on top of it is too big, too clean, fingers lacking the telltale sign of breaks that no one cared enough about to set the right way. Gabriel’s own hand looks like he’s been using razor wire for soap and mud for water, and the fingers intertwined with his look nearly snow white against them.

Beside them both, a bloody length of copper wire sits abandoned on the floor. He coughs again, quiet and weak, droplets of blood raining freely onto the floor. He tries to look up, to figure out what’s happening, but when he can’t find the energy to do it, gentle hands cup his face and lift it for him.

It’s not Asmodeus. It’s not even one of his lackeys.

It’s the human that once upon a time, Gabriel called his.

“Gabriel,” Sam chokes out—or Gabriel thinks he does, at least. Sam’s voice sounds like it’s gone through a meat grinder, nothing like the smooth lilting sound Gabriel can almost remember hearing if he tries hard enough. Distantly, some part of his mind stirs, chimes in that Sam sounds just the way he did the last time Gabriel heard him, his hunter’s voice carrying just the same amount of despair as it did the moment he realized Gabriel had stayed at the hotel to fight his brother, to buy them time, and ultimately, to die. “Gabriel.”

There’s horror and unfallen tears in equal measure in Sam’s eyes, but Gabriel can’t quite figure out why. He doesn’t have the energy, honestly. He doesn’t even have the hope left in him to believe this is anything more than some newly minted form of torture for him. It just is.

It’s a good attempt, Gabriel thinks, but he’s too numb to give much of a damn about anything now. He’s so numb to it all, Asmodeus could’ve ushered in Lucifer wearing Sam’s body, and he wouldn’t even have blinked. All the knives and knuckles had lost their luster sometime around the time Gabriel’s will had festered and fermented until it rotted to nothing.

He can almost remember how much it’d hurt, being set alight with flames born of holy oil stopped hurting so much somewhere around the seven hundredth time.

He got through it at first by thinking of the face in front of him. Nothing ever mattered to him more in the first few years he spent in the same godforsaken room than Sam. He was never far from Gabriel’s mind, always lingering right up there on the edges.

Gabriel never did quite know for sure what happened to him.

He could piece together that the Winchesters had saved the world, but he never had managed to figure out at what cost. But when he’d heard Sam’s name from somewhere other than his own voice for the first time in years, he’d damn near cried.

 _Asmodeus had mentioned Sam offhandedly once a long while back, unintentionally renewed Gabriel’s reason to fight with a single scrap of information that let him know his human was still alive._ _He probably would’ve given in far sooner if he hadn’t known that Sam was still fighting out there somewhere, but even for all the Grace he’d once had, he was too flawed, too human to hold his head up forever. And he was too tired, too far gone to hate himself over it anymore._

He’s _speaking_ , he belatedly realizes. That’s his voice, so much older and thinner, tearing at the fringes. He sounds worse than Sam, worse than anyone he’s ever heard.

And Sam looks like he’s breaking all over again, just how he did when Gabriel told him to take his brother and angel and screw off, because he wasn’t ever going to fight his family. 

Something like guilt curls up tight and cold in Gabriel’s chest, because no matter all the things he’s done, he’s never wanted to hurt Sam. It was never supposed to him that put so much horror and regret and guilt on the face of the one person who’d loved him even when he’d seen him at his worst.

But he’s gone and done it again, gone and hurt the person in the world who may as well care about him most. Or who did, at least.

That was the last thing Sam had said to him, the last thing Gabriel had heard before the blade sunk deep into his stomach, wasn’t it? He’s sure it was. He can hear it now, echoing louder and louder in the back of his skull.

_I love you._

He’d had all of anger and desperation and pleading in the world in his voice, begging for his angel to be alright, a feeling Gabriel never got the chance to echo back.

He doesn’t know what still stands, not when so much time has passed.

“This is my fault,” Sam says, shoulders heaving with what Gabriel would call a sob on anyone else. “I should’ve known. I’m sorry. Shit, Gabriel, I’m so sorry.”

And vaguely, slowly, then all at once, Gabriel realizes with certainty that this is real, that the too big hands he feels cupping his face are _there,_ that the voice that’s rambling on and on, apologizing until he’s stumbling over words is his hunter’s, that Sam is _real_ and _here_ and holding him like neither of them had ever been gone at all.

This isn’t another one of his dreams or some elaborate method of torture.

Only Sam, only the _real_ Sam could possibly be so goddamned stupid so as to blame himself for not knowing his supposedly dead boyfriend was actually  _secretly_ being held captive.

Gabriel’s hand fists weakly, clutching the material of Sam’s jacket as his human effortlessly slings him up into his arms, clutching him like he’s afraid the archangel will slip though his fingers like water if he loosens his hold for even a moment. It takes all of the strength Gabriel didn’t know he had left to smile at him, but somehow, through some miracle, he manages.

He probably looks like some kind of Freddy Krueger nightmare with his face all fucked up, but Sam’s heart is in his eyes all of a sudden, so it’s worth it.

“This’s about where I’d make you shut up if half my mouth wasn’t ripped to shreds,” Gabriel lightly remarks, casually as he can given that he’s about one minor incident of blood loss away from going comatose.

Sam laughs, and the sound’s broken and more than two shades desperate, but Gabriel thinks it damn well might be the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. All at once, it’s hard to believe he ever forgot why he stopped fighting to begin with.

“I love you too, kid,” Gabriel finally says back after so many years of silence, slumping over into Sam’s hold as the last bit of his energy is spent.

He doesn’t need to see Sam to know that his face is curling with confusion, but the man stiffens against him as befuddlement gives way to understanding. And then his chest shakes once in something that Gabriel would call a sob on anyone else.

But before he can ask, Castiel and Dean burst through the door. For the first time ever, Dean doesn’t bitch about the display of affection. Probably because he’s too busy trying not to show any signs of impending vomit at the sight of Gabriel, the archangel notices with a wry sort of glee. Kind of impressive, really, granted that Gabriel’s hardly even holding together.

Castiel, on the other hand, isn’t quite so good at concealing his emotions. He’s clearly learned enough to know it’s in bad taste to ask _holy shit what the fuck is wrong with your face,_ but his expression tells another story entirely.

Things disintegrate into a blur from there. Too much is going on, and Gabriel’s Grace is too weakened even after finally being freed to stitch himself back together quite yet, and the next thing he knows they’re in an old Men of Letters bunker that Sam and Dean apparently live in now.

But all through it, Sam is with him.

And when he tries to leave Gabriel alone to sleep in an empty room, the archangel makes a noise so pitiful he’s certain he’ll be vehemently denying he ever made such a sound when he doesn’t have one foot stuck in Death’s door, but that’s something he can deal with another day.

Sam settles down under the sheets beside him, throwing an arm around Gabriel’s chest when he presses up against his side.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere,” Sam almost inaudibly reassures him every so often, repeating the phrase quietly like a mantra—not only to Gabriel but to himself as well. Finally, with a voice laced with the kind of tiredness that comes just before drifting away to sleep, he says, “We’ll be fine.”

And for the first time in years, Gabriel believes.

**Author's Note:**

> guess who else got resurrected by this episode? my fucking will to live. and also my muse. 
> 
> leave kudos and comments if you liked it!! i haven't written anything in forever, so i'm kind of nervous haha. hopefully y'all liked it bc i really should be asleep right now and didn't proof read this at all oops :))


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